


Idumea

by hopeintheashes



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Visions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-01
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-04 01:23:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/704873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeintheashes/pseuds/hopeintheashes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood has a gravity that’s stronger than the sun’s; a tether that keeps pulling him back. Set very early in Season 2 and Pre-Series. Featuring Sam with visions and Dean in mourning. On the whole, it's best classified as hurt!Sam, but they're both in pretty rough shape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part I

**Author's Note:**

> **A/N:** This one is a long time coming. I wrote the first few words in the middle of the night 18 months ago, without any idea of where it was going, and I ended up getting to write some scenes that I've been thinking about for a long time, like Sam leaving for Stanford. Many thanks to [](http://kat-of-rafters.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://kat-of-rafters.livejournal.com/)**kat_of_rafters** for her beta skills and encouragement, and for applying logic (sometimes of the grammatical variety) to the proceedings.
> 
>  **Music Note:** Idumea is the name of one of my favorite hymns. Here's the [shape-note](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIkPyUecsnI) version that Sam hears, and here's a [choral arrangement](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FsNCOLed7So).
> 
> **Also available on[LJ](http://hopeintheashes.livejournal.com/8314.html)**
> 
>  **Warnings:** See [ notes at end of work ](http://archiveofourown.org/chapters/1421393#work_endnotes) for warnings.

 

 

  
**Idumea**

  
_And am I born to die_   
_To lay this body down_   
_And must my trembling spirit fly_   
_Into a world unknown?_

  
_A land of deepest shade_   
_Unpierced by human thought_   
_The dreary regions of the dead_   
_Where all things are forgot._

  
_Soon as from Earth I go_   
_What will become of me?_   
_Eternal happiness or woe_   
_Must then my portion be._

  
_Waked by the trumpet sound_   
_I from my grave shall rise_   
_And see the Judge in glory crowned_   
_And see the flaming skies._

 

 

  
_Charles Wesley_   
_arr. Ananias Davisson_   


. . .  
. . .

 

 

 

**Part I**

  
  
Sam opens his eyes to darkness, coming up out of a dizzy half-sleep to a haze of red floating to his right. A hard blink, and it resolves: 2:32. A quiet groan. He’d been so sure that dawn was coming soon.  
  
The heat is pushing down on his lungs, his breathing shallow and labored. He squints past the clock, his eyes slowly adjusting. Dean’s out, flat on his stomach in nothing but his boxers. His sheets thrown off the end of the bed, as far away from his body as possible. Sam can’t quite stand to sleep unprotected like that. It’s like when he was little: those motel sheets, thin as they were, were his armor against the monsters that crept underneath his bed, waiting for the right moment to pounce.  
  
These days it’s a little girl, all haunted eyes and dark hair falling across her face. He has to save her, but he’s got nothing to go on—just dark eyes and pale skin and two rings on a fine gold chain around her neck. There are no tears. She’s beyond crying, deep into sorrow and pain. It’s a look he’s seen before, in his brother’s eyes, back when Sam was almost too little to remember. Before Dean got his shit together and learned to push it down. It’s a look that still creeps up sometimes, now that Dad’s gone, slipping in between the anger and the defensive wall and the practiced, fake smile.  
  
He lets his head fall back against the wall. Dawn’s still a long way off.

 

. . .

  
  
Dawn comes and goes, and they’re driving back roads in the middle of the night. Dean barely slows at the four-way stops where County Route 15A meets Sheep Farm Road, then Brannick’s Hollow, then Aaron Cooper Hill. They can see the next intersection a quarter-mile ahead (and for the middle of nowhere somewhere in New England, there sure are a hell of a lot of roads crisscrossing in the middle of the woods), and there’s something wrong with it, something glowing in the darkness. Dean slows down to look.  
  
It’s the ashes of a road flare, still glowing pink and white. Beyond it is another, then a third. The glare of the headlights flashes back at them inside fragments of blue-green glass. Sam supposes Dean’s not the only one who blows through here like he owns the place. Two sets of dark tracks crisscross through the intersection, ending abruptly at the trees that hem in the oil and stone.  
  
Dean’s breathing shallow and tight beside him, hands bleached white on the unfamiliar steering wheel. (His girl’s in pieces in South Dakota; how’d they get so far away?) Sam looks back up and catches a road sign, green and white: Idumea Road.

 

. . .

  
Just before his senior year of high school, they’d wound up in Maine. Sam was desperate to graduate, preferably without any more transfers, but Dad refused to stay put for ten whole months. "We've got work to do, Sam. The things we hunt don't go on vacation just because you do." Sam begged and pleaded, and finally Dad rolled his eyes and agreed to call Pastor Jim and see what they could work out. When Jim said yes, Dad relented, cautioning, “If your brother and I need you, you come. No bullshit, you hear?”  
  
So there they were, one last hunt before Minnesota. Dad was already off doing who knew what. Dean was going to join him, but first, he had to drop off Sam at the old Congregationalist church to find some missing pieces.  
  
Three miles from the church, Sam licked his lips and broke the silence. “Dad’s gonna let me stay with Pastor Jim.”  
  
“Yeah, I know.” The words were tight.  
  
“Wonder what it’ll be like to be in the same school for a whole year.”  
  
“Mm.”  
  
“I can go to prom… get laid.” He grinned, looking over at Dean, waiting for his approval. Dean flashed a smile back, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Maybe I’ll meet someone in one of my AP classes.”  
  
Sam could tell Dean knew where this was going, but his jaw was set, and he didn’t take the bait.  
  
“Which I’ll need. Y’know. For college.”  
  
Dean was chewing on his lips, hands tight on the wheel, but Sam couldn’t stop. He should be able to tell Dean this, and Dean should be _happy_ for him.  
  
“I think I want to be a lawyer. I—”  
  
He was expecting it, but it still sent him reeling. “Jesus, Sam, would you just shut up for two minutes and think about the case? You’re gonna get us killed because you’re too busy jerking off to some daydream about going to prom, as if any girl would be interested in a freak like you.”  
  
Sam had a brief flash of what would have happened to anyone else who said that (blood, lots of blood, and Dean stepping back with a fierce, satisfied smile, rubbing his knuckles and wiping off his hands), and then hissed at his inner self that he was seventeen years old, damn it, and he would not cry, no matter how much it hurt.  
  
Dean stopped at the end of the dirt road that led to the church. “No matter how much you want it, you’re not out of this family yet. Go do your goddamn job.”  
  
Sam flung himself out of the car and slammed the door behind him. He heard the Impala peel out as he stalked up the hill toward the church.

 

. . .

  
  
Once Dean was gone, Sam took off running up the hill, letting the wind sting his eyes. He slowed as the church came into sight, and then froze: the lights were on, and there were a dozen cars in the parking lot. He jumped aside as another came up the road, tires crunching on the gravel. The driver smiled and nodded to him on his way by. Sam thought about turning back, but Dean was long gone, and wouldn’t be back for an hour and a half—longer, if he was still pissed. And what would Dad say if he found out Sam had left? _(Christ, Sam, I give you one simple thing to do, can’t you even handle that?)_ He took a deep breath and kept on walking. He heard music, and realized that the front doors of the church were standing open to the evening air.  
  
The man who’d driven past had parked his car, and he caught up with Sam near the entrance, next to a sign that read, “Sacred Harp Singing, Wed. 7 pm.” He had graying hair, a full beard, and an air of relaxation that was totally foreign to Sam. He was also blocking Sam’s path to the cemetery. The man smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t it. Are you coming in?”  
  
Sam couldn’t make out any of the words to the song—he wasn’t sure they were words, actually—and he wasn’t so sure that “beautiful” was the right description, but before he had to come up with a response, a look of rapture came over the man’s face. “Idumea,” he said. “This is one of my favorites.” The singers paused for breath, and then he joined in, still standing on the sidewalk next to Sam, making no move toward the open door:  
  
 _And am I born to die_  
 _To lay this body down_  
 _And must my trembling spirit fly_  
 _Into a world unknown?_  
  
He smiled at Sam, saying, “You’re welcome to join us,” then strode into the church, still singing.  
  
The music wasn’t pretty, not in the usual sense, but it was raw and powerful, full of longing and mourning and deep belief. Sam looked toward the cemetery, but waited until the song finished and the group moved on to something more upbeat to slip in among the graves, searching for the name “Harrington” in the fading light.

 

. . .

  
  
He found seven Harringtons, but none of them named Ezekiel, even after he double-checked every grave in the cemetery. He sat with his back against the church’s stone foundation and listened to more of that haunting singing (those were old songs; they had to be old songs), and then slunk back into the shadows as the singers emerged, laughing, and pulled away. The church was dark and the sky darkening to meet it by the time the Impala came rumbling up the hill.  
  
Sam looked at Dean nervously as he got in, but his brother’s anger seemed to have been replaced by exhaustion, so he figured it was safe to speak. “How was it?”  
  
Dean shrugged. “Not too bad. We got some info from the coroner.” His voice was going, wearing thin in places like his old flannel shirt, and he closed his eyes for a moment too long before pulling out of the parking lot, the headlights swinging around to light up the gravestones, the woods, and the Sacred Harp sign. Sam chewed on his lip, rolling words around on his tongue, and then swallowed his concern.  
  
Sam stayed quiet for the rest of the night, opting instead for an intense, silent exchange of looks with Dean behind Dad’s back. Dean had answered Dad’s announcement of, “Alright, we’re going to the bar, don’t burn the place down, Sam,” with a quick, longing glance toward his bed and then a steely resolve, and finally a warning look at Sam that said, _Don’t make things harder than they have to be, not tonight, Sammy_ , just as Sam was opening his mouth to say who knew what to Dad. They left, Dean pulling a hand down his face as he turned to go, and then Sam was alone, that song from the church still running through his head.

 

. . .

  
  
Dean's barely breathing at the intersection of 15A and Idumea _(and am I born to die?)_ , staring down the remnants of a car crash, and Sam wants to tell him… what? That Dean’s life is worth more to him than Dad’s? Fuck. It’s true, of course it’s true; if you held him at gunpoint and made him choose, he’d pick Dean every time. (And if Dean had to choose between Sam’s life and Dad’s, he would sooner put the bullet in his own fucking brain. The thought turns his stomach upside down.)  
  
Dean’s put himself back together, as much as he ever can these days. He’s silent and still, but Sam knows that if he were to speak, his voice would be as worn as it had been that night, back when Sam still believed there was some way out.  
  
They drive on.

 

. . .

  
  
Bright white light and a little girl’s scream (but it can’t be; her lips are pressed tight, silent and trembling behind his closed eyes) and he’s hot and cold and falling. Dean’s hands are pressing in, rough like Dad’s, searching for a pulse, for a fracture, a fever.  
  
The pavement is soaking under his palms and his knees, and Dean’s telling someone somewhere to fuck off, only nicer because they’re supposed to be cops; cops or agents or liars, _yes, liars_ , and then the light cuts in behind his eyes again and he’s retching into the gutter.  
  
Dean pulls him up and walks him to the car, his palm on Sam’s back like it’s the only thing keeping him vertical. Maybe it is. Dean hesitates as they approach the car on the driver’s side, but lets Sam go around and open his door alone. The doors swing shut in practiced unison, but Dean waits before turning the key.  
  
“You wanna tell me about it?”  
  
Sam shakes his head, raindrops scattering, and lowers his face to his hands. There’s nothing useful. No clues. Just a little girl, and kids are always a bad sign.

 

. . .

  
  
Sam’s swaying, trembling hands carding through his hair, as Dean unlocks the motel room door. Two steps in, he lets himself fall onto the nearest bed. The sheets pull the rainwater out of his clothes; the whole bed will be soaking soon. Dean opens his mouth as if to say something about it, but closes it again, pulling his fingers together over his eyebrows, eyes scrunched tight. It’s a move Sam sees a lot these days.  
  
Sam pulls the pillow over his head. There’s a rustle and a thump when Dean drops the trash can next to his bed a moment later, then a half-second pause before he walks away. Sam’s hit with a rush of nostalgia and indignation. _Not a fucking kid, Dean_ , but God, what he would give for this to all be fixed with Saturday morning cartoons and Dean sitting up beside him in the bed, grumbling about having to play nurse but letting his affection sneak through in the gentle way he brushed Sammy’s hair back out of his eyes. There’s a second when Sam has to bite back tears (Jesus, these visions mess with his head) before the anger settles in. Fuck this. _Fuck this_. All of it. Hunting and visions and everything you love going up in blood and flames and shattered glass and hospital rooms; fuck that, it’s just too fucking much.  
  
He’s crying now, under the pillow, silent and as still as he can manage.  
  
There’s the familiar crack and hiss of a beer bottle, and then a quiet _thud_ as it hits the table. Dean’s watching him. Probably not even pretending not to. _Not a kid, Dean_. Sam tries to block it out, and succeeds.

 

. . .

  
  
It’s hot. Too hot, and the temperature’s rising; there’s a drop on his forehead, heavy and wet, and another; _don’t open your eyes, you know what’s next, Jesus Christ, don’t open your eyes—_  
  
“Sam! Sam, it’s 90 degrees out. Can you even breathe under all that?”  
  
Dean’s pulling the sheets and blankets off of him. He stays awake long enough to strip to his boxers; everything’s soaked with rainwater and sweat. Before he loses his grip on consciousness, he pulls the sheet back up. Meager protection, but it’s all he’s got.  
  
Dean’s sitting on his own bed, watching him, beer in hand.  
  
Well. Not _all_ he’s got.


	2. Part II

He’s woken just before dawn by a nightmare. It’s normal; almost welcome. Running through the woods from something with teeth and claws he can handle, as long as he doesn’t have to face that little girl again. He steadies his breathing; remembers that they’re back in the Midwest. He’s lost track of where. There’s just enough light to make out the other bed. It’s empty. He flips on the bedside lamp and eyes the salt lines. Intact. Their car is still visible through the window. Sam steps outside, welcoming the coolness of the morning air. There’s a stream off to his left, past the motel on the side away from the road. It’s surrounded by thorns and weeds, and the water’s throwing back the morning light in between brambles and long, thin leaves.

Dean’s crouched down in the tall grass with one hand in the water, letting the current play through his fingers. He’s got a cigarette in the other hand, and as Sam approaches, he can see the rest of the slightly-crushed pack on top of Dean’s flannel shirt. They’ve both been flung to the side. Wisps of smoke rise up into the early morning fog.

Dean doesn’t smoke very often, at least not front of Sam. He doesn’t like the lectures. Since the accident, though… well, Sam knows enough to pick his battles. The argument always comes back to the same sticking point, anyway: “Seriously, Sam, you think cancer’s gonna get me before some demon or black dog?” Sometimes he has a reasonably witty comeback, but he’s always left with this sick feeling he can’t quite describe. He knows they’re likely to die young and bloody, and he supposes there’s some honor in that. _Gonna save the world, Sammy. Save the world or die tryin’._ He’s just not sure how to apologize to Dean for the way he pictures the two of them sometimes, old and not too terribly broken. Alive. It’s harder to see these days, but Sam hasn’t given up just yet.

When Dean looks back, his eyes are like that little girl’s. Beyond crying. Just… beyond. He looks at Sam, his face unreadable, and then walks back to the motel without saying a word. Sam gives him a minute, going down to the water and dipping his hand in the stream. When he gets back, Dean’s in the shower, then out the door. He returns with coffee, and they drink it without really looking at each other. They’ve always been good at this game.

 

. . .

The time between, after it had been decided that Sam was leaving but before he’d actually gone, had been full of mornings like these. There’d been coffee and newspapers and the three of them looking at anything other than the others’ eyes. Dad would bark out orders, and he and Dean would go into battle, leaving Sam with stacks of ancient books. It was a natural division of labor: the student and the soldiers. But after, in the in-between, it felt like Dad and Dean were leaving him behind as… punishment. Not that he wanted to go with them, not really, but it felt like they’d already written him off.

Sam left for Blue Earth on a bus. He understood why, he really did: there was something going after little kids down in Georgia, and it wasn’t going to wait for them to make a detour halfway across the country in the wrong direction. Still, something inside him hardened as he looked out the bus window. They were already walking away, Dean looking back, Dad looking ahead. They’d both hugged him at the bus station, Dad briefly (“You don’t give Jim trouble, and you come when we call, you got that?”); Dean holding on (“Find that smart girl of yours and get laid,  right, Sammy?” and then, quiet, “Good luck”). None of them had actually said goodbye.

Didn’t want to tempt fate.

 

. . .

The year away was… eye-opening. He made friends, took his SATs, went to prom (and yes, got laid, although not on the same night), and, somewhere in the middle of all that, applied to college. He kept quiet about that part in his brief conversations with Dean. Things were strained enough between them. From what he gathered, Dad had reacted to his departure by taking every hunt he could get his hands on. “Well, we’re not so tied down anymore,” he’d told Jim, and Sam, listening in from the other room with the mouthpiece turned up above his head so they wouldn’t hear him breathe, had had to bite down on the tip of his tongue. From what Sam could put together, they would drive a full day and night to chase down a lead, and if it turned out to be a hoax or a nutjob or a good old-fashioned murderer, they would pack up and go hurtling across the country in some other direction, just as far and just as fast. Dean sounded more tired every time he called. One night, Sam jerked awake at one a.m. to the sound of a ringing phone. Even though he knew it was almost certainly for the pastor—usually bad news, but so far never for him—he went out into the hallway. This time, Jim’s door opened as well, and he approached Sam with a sad sort of smile. “It’s for you.”

Sam had taken the call downstairs in Jim’s office, socks slipping on the wooden steps as he ran. He grabbed the phone. “What happened?”

“Sammy!” The word was breathless and imprecise, but seemed happy enough.

“Dean? What’s going on?”

“Nothin’. I just—” He broke off coughing, wet and awful.

“Jesus, Dean.”

“I just wanted to—to call you.”

Sam squeezed his eyes shut and let himself fall into Jim’s desk chair. This was wrong. Wrong in ways that made his stomach seize, that made him want to drop the phone and crawl back into bed. _Look after your brother, Dean._ Never the other way around.  

“Sammy? Are—did you—” —a ragged breath— “still there?”

“Yeah.” Fuck, what was he supposed to do about this halfway across the country? “Where are you?”

“Motel, where’d’ya think?” Dean began to laugh and wound up choking.

“Yeah, but where—”

He was cut off by the bang of a door, a muffled “Goddammit, Dean,” and the phone being wrestled out of Dean’s hand. “But it’s Sammy, Dad!”

“And what the hell good did you think he’d be able to do?”

“I just—you were gone—”

“No. He’s gone. Get that through your head.” Sam was breathing hard by then, trying to hold back angry tears. Just before Dad hung up the phone, getting quieter as the receiver got farther away, he heard, softer, gentler, “He’s gone, but I’m here. Come on. Come on.”

Sam sat back, shaking. He didn’t sleep that night.

. . .

  
He finally broke the news in June.  
  
“It’s not forever, Dean.” Quiet, looking over from the passenger’s seat, through the dark.  
  
No yelling this time. Just a shaky breath and a few silent tears illuminated in a single set of oncoming headlights. Because Sam hadn’t yet figured out what Dean already knew: _Yes, Sammy. Yes, it is._  
  
Fifteen miles of silence, and then: “Don’t tell Dad.” Dean’s voice was steady now, his hands over-tight on the wheel. “Not yet.”

. . .

 

“You had a whole year, Sam. A whole goddamn year. Time’s up.”

September 15. Bus tickets in his pocket to Palo Alto, California. Bags packed. Time was up. He’d had to tell Dad.

At first, Dad had laughed, like maybe he was the victim of some practical joke. But then he’d looked at Dean, sitting with his head down and his eyes averted, and at Sam, standing at his full height (he was as tall as Dad now, and still growing), looking back defiantly.

“You had your year, but that’s over. You’re done. You are part of this family, goddammit. _You do not get to walk out on us again._ ”

Sam glanced at Dean. His brother’s eyes were pleading, apologizing, but there was anger in there as well. Anger and hurt and betrayal. Sam turned back to Dad. “I’m going. You don’t get a say.”

There was a moment when Dad didn’t move; when he stood still in front of Sam, fists clenched, rage building. Sam braced himself. Dad would win in a fistfight, but Sam could make a good showing and then get the hell out the door. Could even grab his bags on the way out. His hand went to the bus tickets in his pocket: secure. This was it, then. He began to raise his fists, feet ready to take the impact and then to run. Dad wasn’t looking at him anymore, though. His narrow, furious gaze had settled on Dean.

“You knew about this?” Dean wouldn’t meet his eyes. Dad took a few steps toward him, his voice rising. “You let him think this was really going to happen? And when the fuck were you going to tell me?” He was right on top of Dean by then, hands on his collar, dragging him to his feet. “The fuck were you thinking? What the _fuck_ , Dean!” A hard thud, and the breath left Dean’s lungs in a soft, stifled moan as Dad slammed him up against the wall. And Dean took it, eyes closed, lips at the ready to say “yes, sir” or “no, sir,” and maybe Dean couldn’t see how fucked up this all was, but Sam was done. He threw himself at Dad, all of his weight behind it, knocking him away from Dean. As he opened his mouth to speak, a fist came up to meet his jaw. He staggered, but stayed on his feet. Dad had never hit him before. In training, yes, but never in anger. Dean had always stepped in to diffuse the situation before it got to that point; had been able to send Dad off to the bar or Sam out for a run. Tonight, he didn’t move. Punishment for Sam leaving them. Again.

“ _This,_ ” he got out, the adrenaline masking the pain enough to keep his jaw moving for a few more minutes. “This is what I’m getting the fuck away from.” He looked over at Dean, who had slid down the wall and was sitting on the floor. “You should come too.” Dean just closed his eyes again. Sam grabbed his bag with shaking hands, but his voice was steady. “Well. You know where I’ll be.”  
  
“If you walk out that door, don’t you ever come back.” Dad’s voice was different now. Quieter, but with no less anger.  
  
Sam turned back to him, to Dean slumped against the wall, to a filthy motel room and half-cleaned guns and the stench of whiskey and sweat and blood, to the life that had been thrust upon him. The life he could choose to leave. He wiped a slow stream of blood away from his mouth and picked up his bags.  
  
“I won’t.”

. . .

  
He hadn’t. At first, there’d been occasional phone calls with Dean, but they were short and tense and faded away. He’d moved on with his life. He and Jess. And then Dean had shown up in the middle of the night, a shadowy figure moving through the dark, and there’d been a case, a hunt, a burning. And then the fire. And he’d been right back where he’d started, like those four years of freedom had never happened, save for Jess and the stab in his gut every time he thinks of her.  
  
So here they are, Dean with a debt he can never repay and Sam feeling like he had back in Jim’s office, wanting to pull the covers tight over his head and wait for the storm to blow itself out. He’s not seventeen anymore, though. Not seventeen, imagining an easy escape; not five or six or seven, fearing the monsters under the bed but coming to understand that they couldn’t possibly be real. Not ten or fifteen or twenty, believing that his big brother was invincible. Must be invincible, must never be in need of protecting, because otherwise, how could he have left?  
  
Blood has a gravity that’s stronger than the sun’s; a tether that keeps pulling him back. They’re driving a badly lit road through some nameless town when Sam realizes, again, that he can’t escape. That no matter how many times he runs, he’ll always end up back here, in the passenger’s seat in the middle of the night, chasing down something that won’t give in without a fight. It’s like that king from Greek mythology, pushing the boulder up the hill but always finding himself back at the start. _And am I born to die, to lay this body down?_ To die young and bloody, _but with honor, Sam_. To go down fighting, and to have no one left here to remember his name.  
  
He wants to run. It’s an awful thought, leaving Dean here alone with his grief, but he wants to catch the next bus to Palo Alto, to have Jess and Stanford and a position at a law firm, to get married and have a house (fuck, a house, he’s never had a house, never in memory) and—  
  
— and everything else that’s impossible, gone up in smoke, so that he’s here with nothing and no one but his brother, who’s trying so fucking hard to keep it together, but the cracks are showing, and Sam’s not sure what to do if (when) Dean shatters.

 

. . .

  
The little girl’s standing in shallow ocean waves that kiss her feet and pull the sand from beneath them, one breath at a time. Wait long enough, and it’ll swallow her where she stands. Her back is to shore, face to the setting sun. _Portland_. Or, more accurately, just west of Portland. He’s not exactly sure how he knows, but it’s sudden and it’s certain, washed in with a rush of fear and anger. Just when Sam thinks he can’t take on any more of her pain, it’s replaced by an empty resignation.  
  
She’s wading out to sea.

 

 

. . .

 

He comes to and he’s drowning, terrified it means that she’s already gone. He’s cold. Shuddering, freezing cold. Dean’s voice is coming through the airless darkness, a hand on his shoulder, holding him down. He fights hard and the hand is gone, raised in quick surrender.

A few more gasping breaths, and he opens his eyes. The road has no shoulder, so they’re halfway in the gravel, and Dean is watching him with the most focus Sam’s seen from his brother in weeks.

“You good?”

Sam shrugs.

“Portland? As in Oregon?”

He must’ve said it out loud.

Dean runs a hand down his face. “We could be done here in another two days if we work fast.”

Sam sighs. “It’s a kid, Dean.”

Dean’s doing the unspeakable mental calculations, weighing one life against another. Or in this case, several others. Several others who may very well be injured by the time they can get another hunter on scene, but who (probably, maybe) won’t die.

There’s a painful, breathless moment when Sam’s sure they’ve been rear-ended, slammed by some oblivious driver flying down the road, but when he looks up, he’s back on the beach. A woman is running headlong into the water, grabbing up the girl, holding her close. Sam expects her to fight back, but the girl is limp. There’s a moment of terrifying uncertainty, then the woman collapses in tears of relief.

He comes back up. “She’s alive.”

“Was that in doubt?”

He presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Yeah.”

“Shit.” Dean sits back in the driver’s seat, pale and exhausted, and then turns to look at Sam. “You gonna puke?”

“Don’t think so.” Dean raises his eyebrows: _You’d better be damn sure._ “No. I’m good.”

“Alright. You: keep breathing. I’ll call Bobby and see if he can’t send someone over this way. And then… Portland.”  
  
“Portland.”


	3. Part III

They drive, just like they always have. Sam’s earliest memories are in the Impala: straining to see over the front seat, fighting Dean’s feet for space in the middle, sleeping with his head in Dean’s lap. The car they’ve borrowed still feels foreign, a constant reminder of everything they’ve lost.

They wordlessly change places every six hours or so, sleeping in the passenger’s seat, barely stopping for food. Somewhere in Idaho, Sam sees her again. She’s at her bedroom window, looking out over the ocean, speaking to the mist: _Mama, Daddy, I’ll be there soon._ The woman stops in the  doorway. Sam can see her reflection in the windowpane, but the girl is still looking out to sea, hands pressed up against the glass. _Mama, don’t go. No, don’t leave me, Mama, no—_ and her pleas become a wordless scream, small fists pounding against old, warped glass. The woman grabs her around the waist and pulls her back just as the glass shatters. They stumble back to the bed, intertwined; the girl still screaming, the woman crying. The woman wraps a blanket around the girl’s injured hand, and a tiny rose of blood blooms through the yellow quilt. They lie together on the old wooden bed, the woman holding the girl tightly, tears falling into the little girl’s hair. The girl’s screams have turned to sobs, but she takes no comfort from the woman. Instead, she’s staring out to sea.

There’s salt on Sam’s lips when he comes out of the dream, and his fingers ache from being tightly clenched. Dean side-eyes him from the driver’s seat, tense and quiet. Two hours later, at a gas station on the Idaho-Oregon border, he refuses to give up the wheel. Sam doesn’t argue.

By the time they make it to Portland, Dean’s hands are shaking. When he gets out at a convenience store, Sam digs through his bag and comes up with the mostly-crushed box of cigarettes. He rolls it around in his hands for a minute, then passes it over when Dean gets back to the car. Dean pauses like this might be some kind of test, then rolls down the window and pulls out his lighter. Sam keeps his eyes front. The next time he sneaks a glance, Dean’s hands are steady on the wheel.

. . .

They find a motel, because Dean’s dead on his feet and Sam’s one vision away from being the same. It’s getting dark. Dean falls into bed without a shower and doesn’t move. Sam lies on his bed, waiting for the girl to tell him something. Anything. When that doesn’t work, he pulls out his laptop and sets about searching the old-fashioned way.

He falls asleep with the laptop beside him, the browser still open to an article dated 3 weeks ago with the headline, “Small Town Rocked by Boating Deaths,” and, smaller, “Victims leave behind daughter, 8.” The article below begins, “William, 36, and Olivia McIntyre, 35, of Tillamook, were pronounced dead following a boating accident near Cape Lookout on Saturday. Their sailboat capsized due to high winds. ‘The weather looked perfect,’ said Gail Carter, who was at the marina that day. ‘Just perfect, and then that freak storm swept in and took them away. So sad, especially about that little girl.’” The obituaries list among the survivors Grace McIntyre, their 8-year-old daughter, and Sarah Mills, Olivia’s sister. Sam had been about to search for a picture of Sarah when he’d fallen asleep, but he’s sure she's the woman he saw with Grace.

When he wakes up, the laptop is gone. Dean’s studying it intently at the kitchen table. “Ready?”

Sam blinks and stretches. “Yeah.”

They put on their suits and drive.

. . .

They start in Tillamook, and within an hour they learn that Sarah has moved into the McIntyres' house, which is out of town, near the coast. When they pull up in front of the large, friendly-looking home, they don’t even get to the door before a woman—Sarah—comes running out.

“Ms. Mills,” Dean begins, holding up his badge of the day.

She pauses and turns, tears in her eyes. “She’s gone.”

Sam rubs the heel of his hand into his forehead, then feels his knees go out as the light comes back, a knife behind his eyes. Dean’s hand is at his elbow, holding him up, and just when he thinks he’ll pass out, he feels… happiness. Anticipation.

His stomach turns and he’s shaking hard, trying not to puke in the McIntyres’ garden. Dean drags him to the car, throwing some sort of explanation over his shoulder to Sarah Mills. It must be a good one (maybe even the truth), because she gets in the back seat, taking deep breaths to try to calm herself.

Dean’s the only one in any shape to drive, and his hands are tight on the wheel. “Which way?”

Sarah points toward the sea.

. . .

They’re running down the beach, good shoes slipping in the sand, toward a small pair of socks and sneakers that have been placed carefully at the high-tide line. Grace is already chest-deep in the water, the afternoon sun a halo in her dark hair. Sarah screams her niece’s name, but Grace walks on, arms stretched out, fingers trailing in the surf. Two figures float before her, feet just below the waves, shimmering like a mirage. From out past the breakers, they call her on. Sam can feel her joy.

Dean’s shedding his jacket and shoes, leaving a breadcrumb trail in his wake. He drops his dress shirt next to her sneakers and plunges into the water, fighting his way through the tide toward Grace. She’s still for a moment, waves lapping at her shoulders, fingers reaching out through the foam. Sarah stumbles toward the water, tears mixing in with the saltwater spray. Sam catches her and holds her back. She fights him, pulling toward the sea.

With a silent, sudden drop, Grace goes under.

Sarah gives a strangled cry and breaks away from Sam, pushing her way into the water, Sam following close behind. Dean dives beneath the waves, bare feet visible for just a moment before he’s gone. Sam can feel Grace’s heart beating in his chest. She is not afraid.

There’s an endless moment when they’re both underwater, when Sam wonders if an 8-year-old can fight hard enough to hold his brother down. He forces his way toward Dean and Grace, pushing against the current, a guttural yell of frustration burning in his throat. Just as his fear turns into panic, they burst through the waves, Dean pulling Grace up and holding her tight.

She spits and coughs, and then she screams. The figures grow brighter, more solid, fed by the sound. A sharp wind picks up, scattering her words, but Sam hears them as clearly as he had from 3,000 miles away. She’s screaming for Dean to let her go. To let her drown.

To let her die.

Sam’s in deep enough to swim now, but he’s fighting against the winds that began the moment Grace came back up out of the water. The figures are no longer mirages, but swirls of grey and white: terrible gods calling up a hurricane. Dean’s fighting to stay afloat, turning his face away from the wind, but Grace reaches out to them, leaning out as far as she can. Dean loses his footing and they slip beneath the waves. Sam dives for them, but the current pushes him back. He comes up to see Dean and Grace gasping for air, heads just above the surface. There’s a moment of struggle, and then Dean holds something up to the sky. It gleams, metallic, in the muted sunlight. The ghosts scream and burn white with fury, the whistling of the winds reaching a painful, shrieking peak as Dean throws the necklace out to sea. It arcs over the water,  buffeted by the wind, and then hits the surface. It floats for a moment, and then falls out out of sight.

The ghosts, still white and shrieking, sink with it, pulled beneath the waves in a narrow whirlpool. Grace is still kicking and screaming, trying to swim to them, when the last of the wind follows them down, the sky clears, and the whitecaps fade away. Grace freezes, still staring at the spot where the ghosts disappeared, then goes limp in Dean’s arms so suddenly that he almost loses his grip. Sam pushes his way toward them. When he glances back, Sarah is moving toward them, sobbing but seemingly unhurt. He turns back to Dean and Grace. He’s almost close enough to touch them, but neither seems to know he’s there.

“Let me go.” The words are quiet. Hurt.  

“I can’t.”

_“Mama!”_ A sudden, desperate cry.

“She’s gone. They’re gone.” He’s holding her tight, waist-deep in the Pacific in his undershirt and dress pants, both of them rocked by the waves.

“Daddy.” Quiet again.

“I am so sorry, Grace.” Whispered in her ear.

“I can’t…”

“I know, sweetheart.” She’s wrapped around him now, arms and legs. “Some days I can’t, either.”

“I want to be with them.”

“Me too.” His voice gives out and they’re sobbing together, holding each other as the waves break over their bodies, small in the vastness of the ocean. “Me too.”

They turn back toward the beach, Grace’s arms around Dean’s neck, face buried against him. Sam follows a few steps behind, and Sarah pushes forward to meet them. Grace holds onto Dean for a moment before turning to Sarah, who presses a kiss to Dean’s cheek as she takes Grace in her arms, holding on tight, then covers her niece in kisses and tears. Sam moves toward Dean, but he walks away, still ankle-deep in the ocean, following the curve of the coast. Sam pulls a hand down his face and turns back toward Grace and Sarah.

Sarah pulls him in for a hug, still holding Grace. “Thank you,” she whispers, lips to his ear. When she pulls away, she stops. “Will and Livy’s wedding rings.” She knows the answer to her unspoken question, but needs Sam to tell her, all the same.

“Gone.” She lets a sob escape. “He had to. To save her.”

She bites her lips for a moment, holding back more tears, then takes a breath and nods. “To save her.”

Grace is starting to shake in her arms. “I have to get her back.” She looks Sam straight in the eyes. “Thank you.” Her gaze goes to Dean, who’s sitting in the sand a little way down the beach. “And tell him thank you, too.” One more glance, and a hand motion that indicates that a hundred more words couldn’t cover what they owe these two nameless strangers, and they’re gone.

Sam watches them walk away. Grace looks up for a moment over her aunt’s shoulder, and her dark eyes are different than they’d been in his dreams. Full of grief, but no longer haunted and dead. The ghosts are buried at sea.  

She nestles into Sarah’s shoulder, and they walk on. Sam gives Dean another minute alone, then joins him in the sand. They sit in silence, watching the sun sink down in the sky.

“You don’t have to stay.” Dean’s voice is hoarse, worn thin.  

“I know.”

He meant it as reassurance, but Dean huffs a sarcastic laugh. “Yeah. Of course you do.”

He chews on his bottom lip for a moment, and then decides that he’s done dancing around it. “Sometimes I think about going back.” Dean flicks his eyes up: _I knew it._ “I think about Jess, and about being a lawyer and having a house and kids and…” he trails off. “But just ’cause I think about it doesn’t mean I’m going to run off in the middle of the night.”

“Never stopped you before.” His voice is cold.

“That was…” He blows out a breath. “Different times.” He looks at Dean, and then out to sea. “You’re all I’ve got, man. I’m not going anywhere.”

It’s quiet for a long time. In his peripheral vision, he can see Dean watching him.

When Sam was seven, he made Dean pinky-swear to every promise, no matter how small. Dean’s got that same not-quite-trusting look, like just saying it isn’t enough.

Sam stands and offers Dean a hand. He looks up at Sam, then takes it. _Promise?_

Sam helps him up. Claps him on the shoulder. _Promise._

They stand together and watch the sun go down, and then they turn their backs on the Pacific and head for the Plains. _Save the world or die tryin’._ They may be born to die for strangers who won’t ever know their names, but damn it, today is not that day.

Dean puts in a cassette: Metallica. Dean’s convinced that he can get the Impala back up and running. Sam has his doubts, but if anyone can make it happen through sheer force of will, it’s Dean. Maybe soon enough they’ll be back where they belong.

The beat kicks in and Dean’s hands start moving, drumming on the steering wheel. A smile, small but genuine, slips in during the first verse, and suddenly it’s easier to breathe. He keeps getting pulled back to his brother’s side, and maybe that will kill him in the end. If it does, he’ll go down fighting, and he won’t be fighting alone. He settles back and listens to the rhythm of his brother’s hands over the hum of the car on a long, flat road. He always dreamed of other lives, but this, right here, is home.  

 

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: Suicidal ideation, including in a child.


End file.
